


a cherry-coloured funk

by dickovny



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Motel Room Sex, Psychic Bond, Telepathic Bond, a good deal of spoilers for the s7 finale onward, discussion of previous MSR, discussions of sterility and infertility, scully attempting to be a good mother, the S8/S9 we all deserved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:15:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27153715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dickovny/pseuds/dickovny
Summary: As a gesture of thanks, Gibson Praise blesses Skinner and Scully with the ability to hear each other's thoughts.They are cursed with the inability to tune them out.
Relationships: Dana Scully/Walter Skinner
Comments: 6
Kudos: 24





	a cherry-coloured funk

**Author's Note:**

> Title swiped from the Cocteau Twins song of the same name.
> 
> Playlist for this fic [here.](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5UxwZqBsRooCED2ImBZ3GB) Not in any particular order or synced to the story - but what I listened to while writing it. A general mood board for the whole thing.

don't you wonder sometimes?  
about sound and vision?  
**david bowie; sound and vision  
**  


we're learning to live with somebody's depression  
and I don't want to live with somebody's depression  
**david bowie; fantastic voyage**

They never intended to make Gibson Praise cry.

“It was supposed to be a _gift_ ," he whines, eyes glossy with frustrated tears behind his thick corrective lenses. A small bubble of snot is forming at the end of his nose. “I was only trying to help!”

Walter looks helplessly at Dana, so out of place on the dingy sofa in this cheap rusted trailer in Nowhere, Arizona, and she shrugs. She’s just as tired as he is, the sensation radiating from her bones. Not that he _needs_ to feel it - it’s written plainly enough in her eyes. The compounding of their mutual exhaustions adds a layer of irritability to everything they do. They’re tired enough without carrying around each other’s misery.

 _good luck,_ she thinks. It echoes in the back of his skull.

Maybe he came on too strong, he muses on the drive back to the motel, cramped in the stupid shitty rent-a-car they had logged so many hours in these past two days. His knees are jammed uncomfortably close to the steering wheel and the AC doesn't work like it should.

 _you think?_ She sucks her teeth in annoyance and he wrestles back the urge to smack the steering wheel with his palm.

“I wasn’t - that wasn’t meant for you. Fuck. Can we just talk out loud? Like _normal_ people?” The words bite harsher than he intends, a momentary outburst that elicits a wounded pang in response. It’s chartreuse and tastes like sucking on a penny. How telling that he is more familiar with the palette of her pains than her joys.

This was supposed to fix it all. They were going to drive to the middle of the desert and find the kid and he would just - undo it. Whatever he did. Whatever switch he flipped he was going to simply _unflip_ it.

But he couldn’t. Because he’d never done this before.

According to Gibson, he merely thought about how much he wanted them to hear each other that night in the desert when they saved his life. For them to hear each other the way _he_ heard them.

And then they did.

Unfortunately, they just _didn't stop._

* * *

Initially, Walter is convinced that he is losing his mind. It starts as nothing more than a general mood - there’s the initial layer of his own feelings, emotional states throughout the day tied to the various and sundry moments of his life. But something else keeps seeping through, crowding it out. Typing a report at his desk, laying in bed desperately trying to sleep - hell, sometimes in the _shower_ \- there is a consciousness not his own. At times it is nothing more than tangerine annoyance or bitter irritation. Other times it’s more severe - the rare bone-crushing wave of loneliness comes to him in shades of cobalt. During a meeting with the Section Chiefs he is hit by a stray cloud of arousal so vibrant he has to excuse himself. Everything tastes of jasmine for the next two days.

Contextless, devoid of any pattern or purpose that he can divine, he simply compartmentalizes and pushes onward. Weeks blend into months of this unwanted alien presence of feeling in his mind. He thinks about seeing a therapist. Maybe it’s some kind of stress thing.

And then he starts to hear _words._

Which isn’t to say a voice is in his head, nothing like that. Abstract emotion instead becomes transmuted into specific thought. He can’t articulate what it sounds like - because it doesn’t _sound_ like anything. It’s simply a different kind of awareness. Instead of ‘rust-colored frustration that smells like cardamom’ he gets the added clarity of ‘missing car keys,’ and so on.

He knows, on some level, that all of these feelings are _hers_. He doesn’t admit it to himself - but the coincidences are too numerous to pretend otherwise. The two weeks he spends hunched over his toilet in the morning, sharing in her morning sickness. The overwhelming heliotrope tide of fear when she is kidnapped in Utah. There’s a sore spot at the base of his neck that takes several weeks to fade away. He tries not to think about the depth of the incision, how far that worm burrowed into her flesh.

It manifests in such an undeniable way the night she comes to his motel room, so afraid that they might find Mulder’s corpse unceremoniously dumped in a ditch somewhere. He feels the indigo swirl of panic and despair all day, but the lingering stench of wet cardboard grows so pungent by the time she knocks on his door that it can’t be coming from anyone else. Staring at the stars, coat thrown over his pajamas, they talk about her fears - and he drowns in the ocean of them.

He considers telling her, briefly. But then they find Mulder, her worst nightmare realized, and he can’t bear to shoulder her with one more burden. Walter just patiently absorbs and endures the aftershocks. Standing next to Mulder’s grave, the pain that radiates from her is so vast he nearly faints. The roller-coaster that follows, of Mulder being dead/alive. And then - god, Krycek offers him the vaccine. He could save Mulder, spare her this agony - but at a price he could never pay, swapping one grief for another. It would be easy to lie to himself and say that he did it for her, that losing her baby would be a tragedy from which she could not recover. But in reality, he does it to spare himself. Her loss would tear him to pieces.

So he makes the decision - unplugs the machines. And against all odds, Mulder lives.

Then everything moves so goddamn fast. There are cases and schemes and dangers, all of it old hat. Only it isn’t.

Because now - he loves her. He always did, at least a little bit. Everyone does at one point or another. Mulder was doomed from the start. But to live with her in his brain every day - to see behind the veil, the painstakingly curated Special Agent Dana Scully, M.D. that she projects to the world - he falls hard and fast and completely. He is enamored with the cracks and crevices, the rough-hewn ups and downs of her soul. And now - now he has to endure the worst pain of them all.

He has to feel the way she loves someone else.

It is a dull agony, becoming accustomed to the sheer intensity of it. The fire that can be roused within her. To feel the butterflies that still flutter when Mulder smiles at her. He feels them have sex more than once - he can’t shake the shame of it, becoming a Peeping Tom. Even if it _is_ involuntary.

But then, there is a glimmer of hope.

Beneath the surface waves of affection and comfort, there is something else. A growing rift. A distinct unease. There are fleeting thoughts of disconnect - the notion that things are not what they used to be. She should be happy, wanting so desperately to be able to accept this gift of Mulder’s return, but instead she finds herself left wanting. A stale taste in her mouth. The sense that you can never go home again, not really. Their best days have come to a subdued close. Mulder is different now - understandably so. Learning of Samantha’s fate, his abduction, returning from the dead to find the woman he loves pregnant with a child not his own - all of this leaves permanent scars on his psyche.

There isn’t time to address it - the threats around the life of her unborn son loom closer with each passing day, until it all comes to a frantic head. When he puts a bullet between Krycek’s eyes, his hands tremble not with remorse or any adrenal response of his own but with the terror she feels for her son. 

When Mulder leaves, there is sadness, yes - but there is so much relief. Though she would never admit it to anyone, least of all herself, a weight is lifted from her shoulders. There is no longer the expectation, the charade has come to a close.

It would be the morally just thing to do, telling her of their connection. There is something seedy about it, voyeuristic and unsavory, being privy to all of this without her knowledge. But where to begin? How could he possibly reveal to her the magnitude of his invasion into the deepest recesses of her heart?

Too cowardly to confront the situation head on, he settles for a retreat. He constructs an insurmountable distance between them, consciously dismantling the wonderful friendship that had blossomed in Mulder’s initial absence. Doing so breaks his heart, but he can’t fathom an alternative.

This fragile house of cards collapses around him on an otherwise indistinct November day. A meeting with Follmer goes predictably awry, leaving Dana with the electric, sour distaste the man tends to generate in people. Walter follows her as she storms out into the hall, placing a diffusing hand on her shoulder -

 _fucking asshole_ , she thinks.

 _he’s only doing his job,_ he retorts, instinctively. The realization crests simultaneously - neither has spoken aloud. Both of their voices simply _existed_ in their minds. She stares at him, slack-jawed and speechless, and he watches the rise and fall of her chest.

 _how long?_ Her voice is clear and bright in his head, so distinct that it should _hurt_. But it doesn’t - it’s almost comfortable. Like it’s supposed to be there. Like it’s been missing all along.

 _you too?_ He fires back, spurred on by the warm novelty of understanding. It subsides quickly, as the sheer depth of this clusterfuck begins to unfurl before him. She is far less surprised by this than she should be. Which means -

 _how long?_ The thought from her is insistent now, rattling his bones, fear flickering across her gaze. Her unease reverberates against his own. This whole time - she felt him, too. He was so concerned with her privacy he never stopped to consider his own. His legs are unsteady beneath him, the hallway lengthening in his vision - all of the little moments he had gleaned from her, all of the private, embarrassing snippets of vulnerability - she had experienced the same from him.

_I don’t know, not for sure. didn’t know what was happening - not for a while. confused. you?_

Dana closes her eyes and a vision explodes across his consciousness. They are in the desert, kneeling before Gibson Praise, sweat-drenched in some arid and dusty shithole. Of course she was able to narrow it down. She’d always been so much smarter than him. Than any of them.

A darker thought now, oily and slick and all his own. The dawning understanding that she must have felt it all - the way he cared for her. And she chose Mulder just the same.

There’s a crimson flush spreading on her cheeks as she glances at the floor, because she can feel _this too_ \- and it occurs to him the true nature of the hell they are in. That from this moment forward they will never know a moment of true peace. Every thought and fleeting sensation filtered out and back again, this ouroboros of emotion with no clear beginning or end. 

Her phone rings - Agent Reyes needs something - and he is made aware that to any passerby they have been standing in a strange prolonged silence. This is a conversation better had in a different time and place.

“We should talk. Alone.” He manages to stammer out, when she hangs up the phone and stuffs it abruptly into her pocket. She brushes away a strand of copper hair and he is met by a sallow, jaundiced reluctance.

“My house. I’ll call you tonight, when it’s a good time for me.” The offer is less than genuine, mired in reticence at inviting someone into her home. She is a private woman - her house is her sanctuary. But because of the baby, it’s the only feasible choice. And maybe that’s part of it - the idea of bringing her work in contact with her child.

* * *

When she answers the door with her son cradled in her arms, there is such an earnest, dandelion-hued affection radiating from her that it occurs to him he could not be more wrong. It’s not that she doesn’t want him around the baby. She is trying to obscure herself, in her role as Dana Scully, mother. This is where she is at her most vulnerable. He can’t help but feel a surge of fondness seeing her like this.

The sensation catches her off-guard and she trips over her words, shuffling on her feet as she motions for him to come in.

“I was just about to put him down for the evening. I’ll only be a few minutes. Please, sit.” She nods towards the sofa. Tangled in the golden tones of her warmth for her son and the salt-tang of her nerves there is a soft, eggshell note of genuine relief. It smells like clean linen and he holds it against his tongue.

Walter sheds his heavy wool coat, setting it gingerly on a chair before rolling up his shirt-sleeves and coming to rest on the couch. He is terrified of disrupting anything with his presence - being here in the quiet of her home feels like a violation, despite all of the time she has spent _living in his head._ It is so thoroughly domestic - rife with a sentimentality that he had not anticipated. He had always pictured her space the way he knew her to be in her work - ruthlessly efficient, utilitarian and functional. The quilt on the sofa looks handmade, a family heirloom perhaps. The stitches are delicate, the fabric grown fragile with the passage of time - he runs his fingers against the material with great care, aware of the clumsy, calloused roughness of his hands. 

“My grandmother made that. Before she died, she gave it to Melissa. I had never given it much thought, never really considered the artistry in it.” She’s light on her feet as she passes through the living room and into the kitchen, speaking quietly so as not to wake William. “But Melissa loved it. And then, well. I didn’t trust Bill with it, he’s not very careful with things. And Charlie never wants anything to do with any of us. Listen to me, telling you all of this like it _means_ anything to you.”

There’s a wistful longing that accompanies her sister’s name, but it’s a pain that has faded over the years, as worn as the cotton of the quilt. He wants to comfort her - wants so desperately to wrap her in his arms. With a flourish of inspiration, he sends her a feeling instead, a beacon of sympathy and tenderness. He watches her eyelids flutter shut, shoulders drop slightly, and feels a touch triumphant. And just like that - it’s gone again. Her spine stiffens. The mask descends once more. 

“Would you like something to drink?” She ventures, trying to lighten the mood. “A beer?”

“Whatever you’ve got is fine, thanks.” He crams himself to the far edge of the sofa, hip jutting uncomfortably against the arm to allow a gulf of space to exist between them. He’s treading so lightly around her that he’s starting to grind his teeth. Which - of course -

“Please, stop - stop being so nervous around me. It’s making my hands shake,” she pleads with a weak laugh, a slight tremble on her lip as she sets herself down next to him.

 _I’m sorry._ He takes a breath to steady himself, capturing his anxieties before they bleed across the barrier into her brain. Then, aloud - “What’s it like for you?” It’s a clumsy attempt to cross the threshold into acknowledging this thing that has developed between them.

“What do you mean?” Her fingernails find the edge of the peeling label, shedding itself from the condensation slicked bottle. She hasn’t taken a single sip.

“For me - it’s not like I can read your mind. I mean, I guess I did earlier. But that was new.” He takes a thoughtful swig - just because she isn’t drinking doesn’t mean he won’t. The bottle clinks against the surface of the coffee table and he cringes. “Whatever your feeling - it’s in my head. If it’s really strong I’ll get a _thought,_ but most of the time it’s just - a color or a smell. When you answered the door, you looked at the kid and - there was all this _amber_. I dunno - it’s hard to explain. Fuck. I’m not saying it right. This sounds wrong.”

“No, I understand. Or at least, I think I do. It’s an invasion of feeling - intrusive, hallucinatory. These things you project,” she furrows her brow, choosing her words with customary precision. “You’re a very grounded, tactile individual. All of these _textures_. The occasional sound, too. If you’re happy - it’s like running my fingers over polished wood or laying in the sun.”

 _what do you feel now?_ he wonders before he can stop himself, caught in the desire to see him the way she does. There’s a learning curve to this, being able to stymie a thought before its transmission. She closes her eyes and hums to herself quietly, wading through the onslaught of stimuli, tilting her head this way and that. Her lips part in a satisfied grin.

“There’s this - this off-kilter violin. The way a kid plays when they’re just starting to learn and they can’t quite get the bowing right. You’re nervy and tense - but it’s surface level, there’s something beneath it, that I can just _barely_ make-out.” As her smile softens into something more tender, he rushes to quash the way it makes his heart soar, focusing his attention on a loose bit of thread on his pants. “The way that - this is _embarrassing._ It’s so deeply personal, saying it outloud feels - it’s clean bed sheets. _Relief._ ”

He chuckles at this in spite of himself, and it feels so _good_ to have a moment of levity all his own. _what’s funny?_ she inquires, lightning-quick and insecure.

“I smelled it when I got here. Coming from _you._ Laundry detergent, dryer sheets. Relief is fresh bedding, apparently.” 

She laughs at the absurdity of it all, acquiescing to the strangeness of the situation. It’s a brash, throaty laugh that he’s never heard before - ungainly and ugly, metamorphosed into something so perfectly endearing from her delicate lips. And while he’s never experienced it firsthand, he’s familiar enough with the diaphanous, tinkling silver that it’s wrapped in.

There’s real magic here in this unremarkable Virginia apartment, on a showroom floor couch draped in a hand-me-down quilt. Merely existing in the sublime tide of sensation between them, this shared bubble of companionship - he’s getting the hang of manipulating his feelings, of tamping down the more robust. But something must’ve slipped through despite his best intentions because she’s retreating, severing the connection, a fuzzy burst of cyan-tinged panic shattering the haze.

_I know walter - it’s just -_

“It’s too soon,” she chokes out, abruptly rising from the sofa. She stands on the other side of the coffee table, wringing her hands as if somehow the couple feet of glass and metal will hide her from him. As if anything could. “For me. It’s - I can’t.”

Before he can reassure her that he isn’t asking her for anything she isn’t willing to give, small insistent wails crackle from the baby monitor on the side-table, and she’s apologizing and rushing away. Left alone in the living room, trapped under the enormity of his feelings, he’s back to feeling like a stranger again. He should go. He should leave and never come back. He doesn’t belong here with her - he was her boss, and in a time of crisis merely her friend. Their relationship is circumstantial at best. And if Mulder is anything to go by, he certainly isn’t her type, lacking that wounded puppy-dog gaze and full pout.

By the time she returns, the baby wriggling against her chest, he’s already on his feet and sliding his coat over his arms. The ache inside him is so deep that it scares him - he tries to stifle it with something else, tries to hide the magnitude of his longing behind his annoyance with the way his shirt-sleeve catches and bunches up against his bicep. But she feels it all the same, because of course she fucking does, and he’s so sick of the light floral mist that clings to her when she’s near him. Because he knows what it means, knows that in some way she wants him, too. The certainty that she will never allow herself to cross that line - never admit to herself that she isn’t waiting for Mulder after all - threatens to cleave him in two.

 _what do you want me to do?_ Her voice is impossible to ignore as it twists along the winding neurons of his brain. It cuts through the miasma of self-loathing, stopping his hand on the doorknob.

“Pretend this isn’t happening, I guess. Until we can find the kid and make him take it back.” He can’t bear to turn and actually look at her, to _see_ in her face the pity he feels. “You were wrong, earlier. It wasn't a violin. It was a cello.”

He blusters down the front steps and out into the street, a bundle of raw nerve in a swinging black coat. All he can think of is Anna Greenleaf, 2214 Gunderson Court. It’s so clear in his mind - the sun pouring in through the window of the drawing room in the afternoon, illuminating her fair hair and reflecting off of the large instrument perched between his thighs. Walter was an awkward, lanky thirteen year old - his bones and hormones ravaged by the onset of puberty the summer prior. And although his parents dutifully shuffled him from lesson to lesson from the age of eight, Walter never got very good at cello. He played even worse around the young Miss Greenleaf, the first woman he ever _noticed_ in that way, because his feelings for her frightened him. His damp palms struggled to maintain control of the bow whenever she smiled at him.

And that is what Dana heard tonight. Walter, once again that pubescent boy, so reverent and so terrified in the face of divine beauty. The bow of her lip and the slight aquiline curve of her nose reawakened in him the all-consuming fear of first love. He is dimly aware of hailing a cab. Walter slams the door shut behind him, apathetic to the way it catches the bottom of his coat.

* * *

Time passes in a muddled slog of casework and emotional snippets. They try, genuinely _try,_ to ignore each other. To act as if they don’t feel their presence every moment of every day. It’s easy enough to avoid her physically now that she no longer works in the building. But each statement or typed report from the agents underneath him is tinged with her wording. Dana’s ghost haunts each manila folder that crosses his desk. Sometimes, when the angle is _just right,_ he could swear that his secretary passes for her twin.

And then there are the times she is asked to consult. They must play-act for John and Monica as perfectly amicable colleagues, as if they aren’t becoming increasingly frustrated with each other. To greet one another with a polite smile and ‘ _how are you_ ’, knowing full well how they slept and what they had for breakfast, how they felt about the morning news and the commute to work. How looking at her and feeling that tug of longing makes him want to scream.

Once, there is so little room in an autopsy bay that they are forced to stand elbow to elbow, witnesses to some nonsense disagreement between the two agents. When she looks at John there’s a faint blush of pink and a whiff of cherry blossoms.

 _you think he’s attractive,_ he chides, watching the color rise in her cheeks.

 _you think_ **_she’s_ ** _attractive,_ she bites back, eyebrow arched.

 _so do you._ It’s a topical barb - a way of masking his real thought, that Monica couldn’t begin to compare to her. But that doesn’t make it any less true, and the embarrassment that oozes from her smells of latex. He regrets it immediately.

Through it all they try their best to locate Gibson Praise, but it’s hard to find someone who doesn’t want to be found. Then there is more danger again, a chance of Mulder returning and more threats against the baby.

So she does the unthinkable. She gives William away.

The loss is so tremendous - so unfathomably deep - that it hurts in his very bones. He wonders how she can possibly stand, how it doesn’t cripple her. It is not wholly surprising when he finds her at his door in the middle of the night, unannounced.

“I’m - I’m sorry. I should have called first. It’s late. I shouldn’t be here.” She’s stumbling over her words, eyes swollen from prolonged crying, too sore and used up to produce any more tears. There’s a tumult of despair and regret that threatens to knock him on his ass, but it’s the soft undercurrent of embarrassment that compels him to invite her in.

There’s a split second of diffidence, standing there in his sterile pre-furnished living room in nothing but a pair of black sweatpants, but then she’s collapsing against his chest, her body wracked with painful sobs. It’s all he can do to hold her there, hands around her shoulders, withstanding the tidal waves of sorrow crashing down on him.

 _you did the right thing. there was no other choice._ The words would ring hollow on his lips, so he thinks them instead in the hopes she may trust their veracity.

 _i’m a parasite. a_ **_fucking_ ** _parasite._ The thought isn’t meant for him, not transmitted intentionally, but instead an unfiltered snippet of disgust.

“What?” Walter pulls away from her, placing a hand under her chin and tilting her head up to look at him. She flinches at the eye contact. “Here, sit down on the couch. I’m going to put on some clothes, grab you something to drink.” 

It’s a minor agony, bucking against the constant thrum of her pain as he pulls on a t-shirt and stumbles bleary-eyed to his kitchen for a glass of water. When he returns, she sits with her knees against her chest, staring vacantly at her coat pooled on the floor. There’s a new dimension to her feeling - a cold, gunmetal thread of self-loathing woven throughout.

“Drink. Please.” He forces the glass into her hand, and does not speak again until she has choked down a few token sips. “What do you mean, that you think you’re a parasite?”

 _I keep_ ** _using_** _you._ She turns her gaze from the floor to him. He’s always thought of her eyes as blue - but seeing them here, tear-slicked and rimmed with red, they seem more grey than anything else. _your feelings are so stable. I’ve been using them to get by,_ ** _leeching_** _off of them - for I don’t know how long. when I was alone and scared. when mulder was dead. when he was alive but dying._

Tentatively, he rests a hand on her shoulder. “What’s wrong with leaning on someone, when you’re struggling? I don’t think you have anything to feel guilty about."

“No,” She blurts, frustrated into verbal speech, brushing his hand away as if burned. “You don’t understand. I never told you about all of this … about the way that I _felt_ you. Because I didn’t know how to get by without it. I kept it a secret so I could keep using you as a crutch. I drained you every chance I got.”

 _I keep taking from you with one hand and pushing you away with the other,_ she thinks, with a meek self-deprecating smile and hollow eyes.

He doesn’t bother to articulate the thought, aloud or otherwise. Because they both know - she can take whatever she wants from him, can bleed him dry. And he’ll be thankful all the same.

She sleeps on his couch, swaddled in a threadbare sweatshirt of his, because he can’t bring himself to send her home. To deny her the succor of his presence. When he crawls in bed, he tries his best to send her all of the strength that he has.

* * *

Several days drag by in a miserable grey slurry, and then - a glorious instance of luck. A promising lead. They know where the boy is, have an address scrawled on a scrap of paper in Walter’s unsteady hand. Plans must be made carefully and attended to in the greatest of detail, in equal parts concern for Gibson’s privacy and their own. So they wait a full fortnight until their schedules are clear.

Their flight out is delayed in Denver, an hour long layover stretching into three and then four. They pass the time at an unremarkable, overpriced airport bar, paying fifteen dollars a piece for scotch and sodas, gin and tonics. Watching her teeth worry the little black straws into nubs, he thinks about how similar they are. The sort of people who live out of suitcases, who have simple drink orders and who keep their feelings buried and locked away. And therein lies the rub - they’re far too private to exist like this.

“Don’t worry, Walter,” she gazes at him over the rim of her glass, just as the loud speaker announces yet another half-hour delay to their flight. _you’ll be rid of me soon enough._

Irritable and impatient, they finally touch down in Phoenix and amble over to a rent-a-car kiosk, sticky with the residue of recycled cabin air and prolonged stress. He wonders if the clerk assumes that they’re married. Who’s to say they aren’t? Do married people know each other this intimately?

They get on the road much later than anticipated and decide to call it a night at a motel an hour out of the city, foregoing their plan to drive straight through to the reservation Gibson is sequestered on. They plead with the teenage clerk for separate rooms, but the only vacancy is a single with a queen-sized bed and a pull-out sofa. He offers them a 50% discount if they book for two nights. Walter pays for the room in cash. 

As if the physical distance would mean anything anyway. 

“Aren’t you afraid?” He mumbles over the creak of the couch springs, the rusted metal groaning in protest as he folds it out. Walter has spent the day combing through the rainbow of emotion pouring from her, various shades of anticipation and annoyance. But the pale thistle hue of apprehension has been nowhere to be found.

 _afraid of what?_ She wears a matching pajama set, button-down top and all, with a thick green clay mask to match. It’s as if she is aiming for distance - to desexualize herself as much as she possibly can. Which is ironic, considering the faint odor of magnolia blossoms when her eyes drag across the damp white undershirt clinging to his chest. It’s so hot here - his skin hasn’t been dry since they left the concourse. Even the room is stifling.

“Of the silence. Once this is … y’know. Gone.” The thin mattress atop the makeshift bed is lumpy with age - but sleeping in the larger bed together would be worse, somehow. _I’ve grown pretty used to having you around._

“I hadn’t considered it,” she calls out as she shuffles to the bathroom, turning on a tap to rinse her face. The fact that she chooses to speak it aloud indicates to him that she’s lying.

* * *

It’s a further two hours drive from the motel to the boy’s hideout. Watching the cracked earth and occasional cactus or bit of scrub roll past their windows, they spend the majority of the journey in the closest thing to silence they can achieve. There is still the ever-present hum of _dana_ in his every breath, every beat of his heart.

 _how long were you married?_ She doesn't look at him, never tears her eyes from the landscape outside.

“Almost twenty years.” It’s been long enough now that he can hold it at arm’s length. Like discussing a car accident years after the fact. Sharon was a part of him and then she wasn’t. Did he ever love her? He thought he did. But the way he loved her was so mundane and perfunctory compared to this. He never feared losing _her_.

 _you never had children. why?_ Curiosity tinged with inky blue loss. There is a hint of envy there too, with its acrid vinegar stench coating the back of his tongue.

He signals for the exit, the tick of the blinker filling the void of silence as he chooses how to respond. Finally, he settles on simplicity.

_I can’t. exposure to chemical agents in the war. I think. sharon did want them, but never enough to adopt or use a donor._

“Oh, I’m sorry.” The admission startles her into speech. Her pity smells like anisette and she’s tactful enough to not pry into any further specifics. “I had no idea.”

Another similarity, another shared pain. _there’s a lot of things you don’t know about me,_ he quips as their wheels slow over the crunching gravel of the trailer lot. _you just never took the time to find them out._

But there is no deliverance to be found here, in this sweltering tin box with its sun-faded furniture and crying little demigod. Their worst fears are realized - the boy can’t undo what he’s done. The drive back is Dantean, a sickening blur of jabs and barbs and chartreuse pains. A great bubble of fury and despair grows in the pit of his stomach, so massive he is far beyond caring about its transmission to her. If she wants to steal his strength she can choke on his misery, too.

It bursts within him with the click of the motel room lock behind them. Walter has always been a stoic man, valuing his stalwart nature above all else. He cannot recall a time in his life where he has been so swept in a current of feeling. The explosion is all-encompassing. Nothing will remain when the blast recedes.

“Tell me the truth, Dana,” He spits her name, flexing his hands at his sides, resisting the desire to smash the room to pieces. “Stop lying to me. Stop lying to _yourself_. Gibson said that he wanted us _both_ to hear it. What did he hear from you, that he felt so goddamned compelled to show me?”

Dana's nostrils flare and her chest heaves with each labored breath. The scarlet on her cheeks and the hollow of her throat matches the vibrant color of her rage. _how dare you? you don’t know me._

“Don’t know you?” He roars. The suggestion is a punch to the gut, leaving him nauseated with the force of the impact. _I feel you. remember? every single moment. I felt you love him and then I felt you let him go. you were_ **_relieved,_ ** _you lying bitch._

The maelstrom of sensation, the colors and scents that whirl around him - it’s too much. For a moment, the taste of bile curls behind his breath. There is no way of knowing where he begins and she ends. All that exists in every direction is pain and desire and shame and love. In every possible hue.

“Fine!” It’s the first time he’s heard her raise her voice, and it stuns him into stillness. There’s a power to her that exceeds the limitations of her petite frame. “You want me to tell the truth? Then I suggest you do the same. How long, Walter? How _fucking_ long? How many years did you lie in wait, pining for me? Harboring this - this fucking devotion?”

 **_I NEVER ASKED FOR THIS._ ** His consciousness rips through hers so forcefully she winces, shutting her eyes as if struck. _I never pined - I was_ **_content._ ** _I could’ve stayed your friend, for as long as you’d want me, and never asked for a penny more._

“You were happy - with him,” he breathes, aware that he is suddenly standing much too close to her. There is a thin sheen of sweat on her upper lip, glistening in the late afternoon sun. He can almost taste the salt against his tongue. “And then you weren’t. I just want you to be happy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted - then and now.”

 _it’s okay to let go, dana._ _you aren’t obligated to anyone. not to him. not to me._

She stares up at him, face contorted in the anguish of choice - and then there is quiet. The swirling kaleidoscope of sensation diminishes, each color collapsing in on itself until there is only white. A pure _vibrant_ white and the scent of roses wet with dew. His hand finds hers and brings it ever so slowly to his lips, braced for a rejection that never comes. When he kisses it her head falls blissfully backward, her mouth parting slightly. The surge of pleasure when he moves his lips experimentally across her skin is exquisite. She gasps, eyes snapping open to meet his. 

It dawns on them simultaneously - of course, how could they have been so dense? The emotional awareness is one thing. But to share a _physical_ sensation - to have it amplified in the echo chamber of their combined being - it is sublime in its perfection.

She has to place her hands on his jaw to steer his face downward to meet her, straining up to crash her mouth against his. It is hungry and without hesitation and singularly unlike anything he has ever experienced - the ecstatic confidence of a kiss you can _feel_. The certainty of living the pleasure of another. A moan passes between them - neither one certain of where it begins, neither one caring to know.

With the simple act of touch, the chains are broken. The curse is transmuted into a gift.

And _god_ what a beautiful gift it is.

The kiss ebbs, only for a moment, and he marvels at her swollen lips and heavy-lidded eyes. With the connection ever-so-slightly frayed, Walter can push past the physical and back to the emotional. And the surge of her unfettered want is his undoing.

He’s always been a timid lover - but there is no need for careful exploration, not when he can _feel_ the tug in her stomach when he winds his hand in her hair, gripping it just tightly enough to sting. His massive hands feel clumsy against the buttons of her linen blouse, sliding against her slight shoulders. They careen into the bed, falling haphazardly, unable to strip fast enough. Everything is a jumble of stimuli, half-dressed and tasting as much of her skin as he can. He had never imagined, not even for a moment, that the most wonderful climax of his life would be _here._ Lying on this scratchy motel blanket, his head between her legs, cock still trapped in his pants as she bucks her hips against his hands with each flick of his tongue. He can’t even be sure it’s _his._ Does that even matter? Isn’t it better to simply exist in this rapturous simultaneity?

They could be sated like this, simply touching and mouthing at each other’s flesh for hours - but there exists the terrifying and intriguing possibility of _more._ He flounders for a moment, caught in the fear that he doesn’t have any condoms, before recalling that they are both equally unfortunate in that regard. She quirks her head at the emotional hiccup, bracing herself on her elbows.

 _protection. we don’t need any. sterility’s great, huh?_ He fears for a moment that his gallows humor is too far, that the moment is marred - but then she laughs, that same incredible laugh that he fell in love with on her couch an eternity ago. Only now she isn’t retreating - she lies before him naked in body and spirit, and he gets to watch the quiver of her stomach with each guffaw.

 _is this what you want?_ Ghosting a kiss along her collarbone, she shudders against him in response.

 _can’t you feel it?_ She whispers in his skull and then brings her lips to his ear. “Please, Walter.”

The initial penetration is disorienting - their first instinct is to try and separate the strands of pleasure, to trace and track who feels what _where._ It’s a task impossible in magnitude, and as he begins to experimentally move within her, wholly unnecessary as well. The less he thinks the easier it is.

There is no learning curve, no observing and changing course. He feels how much better it is when he shifts his hips upward like _that,_ and is swept by the current of her delight produced by a burst of staccato thrusts. They move against each other fluidly and without pause, unmoored in this ocean of _them._ He doesn’t know if he’s saying her name aloud or if he’s simply carving it against her brain. Thoughts are started in heads and finished in mouths, fragmented bits of clarity. She might be crying. Or maybe it’s him.

He lavishes a nipple with his tongue, her response so strong it threatens to finish him that very instant. There is no awkwardness of maneuvering - she simply wants to move and he knows where to go. So they sit, her straddling his lap, when he feels the undeniable mounting crescendo. He doesn’t tell her because it is as much _hers_ as it is his, and as it crests they clutch each other in their arms, her teeth scraping the skin of his neck.

Afterward they lie in silence, and he traces a fingertip along the raised knot of scar tissue above her hip. He is greeted by a faded-indigo fear, the smell of wet copper.

_why are you scared?_

“I’m afraid I won’t die.” Her voice is hoarse, hovering above a whisper. “A man told me once that I never will. I was so certain when the cancer came - I was so braced for the inevitable. And then I lived. I refused several times to look death in the face. And now I wonder, so rebuffed - will he ever come for me at all? I was certain my brain would rot in my skull. I was certain that I would never bear children. And I was certain that I would always love him.”

 _and if death isn’t certain - what is?_ The timidity of her question breaks his heart. So he does the one thing he knows how to do.

 _this,_ he thinks as he brings his lips to hers, sending her all of the strength that he has.

They sleep tangled in damp sheets, with her leg thrown over his as she curls into his side. And they dream of a garden full of heady white blossoms.

Everything tastes of jasmine for the next two days.


End file.
